The tech alternatives aren't offered to every immigrant who is caught, he said. ICE decides on a case-by-case basis using factors like immigration and criminal history in the consideration. ICE didn't have details on how long the approval process can take. The spokesman also didn't clarify why families in the last five weeks weren't granted alternatives to detention.

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ICE said it considers family ties as part of its approval. As of the end of 2016, 50,825 people were approved directly at border processing sites in California, Arizona and Texas.

That quick process hasn't been the case for thousands of families separated at the border, Ruthie Epstein, a legislative policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union said.

"They should have been offered alternatives to detention," Epstein said. "Immediately detaining these families is the absolute wrong response."

Yes, there's an app for that

The SmartLink app allows immigrants to check in with officers instead of being detained.

The monitoring program on mobile devices works
Comfortiva Riverton lAJFk
. The app is made by Behavioral Interventions, a subsidiary of private prison company GEO Group.

The company declined to comment on the app, deferring questions to ICE. In its marketing language, the company calls itself the "US leader for offender monitoring products."

The app works by setting up calendar events, reminders and communications between arrested immigrants and police, allowing people to self-check in. Officers are able to use the app to monitor people without watching them at all times.

It uses a photo check-in as a biometric measure to ensure the person using it is the arrested individual.

ICE can also use ankle bracelets with GPS monitoring, as well as call check-ins using voice recognition software, to catch fraudsters. The ICE spokesman said telephonic reporting was the most common method for electronic surveillance.

The Department of Homeland Security's
Inspector General reported
in February 2015 that contractors charge 17 cents a day for telephonic monitoring and $4.41 for GPS monitoring. The US Government Accountability Office reported in 2014 () that the average cost per day for electronic surveillance was $85 a person.

In comparison, ICE's detention centers cost $133.99 a day per bed,
according to its 2018 budget
. The budget requested for a $1.2 billion increase for detention beds, while only asking for $57.4 million for its Alternatives to Detention program.

The program has reunited several immigrant parents with their children in South Texas already,
according to NPR
.

"When you're detaining a parent and a kid, you're inflicting trauma on the family, that sort of trauma can reverberate for years," the ACLU's Epstein said.